Roadkill Buffet is the antidote to MIT stress

hile many of you may have stayed home Wednesday night to watch CBS'
coverage of the Olympics, the few of us fortunate enough to find ourselves
at the Muddy Charles were instead able to witness live coverage of the
"Worldwide Competition of Making Toast," complete with close-ups of the
under the knee toss, the dandruff to cinnamon addition, and slow motion
retakes of the fork in the toaster mistake.

at the Muddy Charles Wednesday evening, to find a bit of levity in this
often oppressive environment.

And levity is indeed what I found. The Roadkill Buffet is an
improvisational comedy group. "None of this has been planned or rehearsed,"
the audience is assured at the beginning and several times throughout the
show. The audience is given the opportunity to choose the place, the
objects, the actions that the comedians must then act out and around.

It is in carrying out this seemingly impossible task that the comedy group
members demonstrate their wealth of creativity. A strange hand movement
becomes a buddha stopping traffic during those difficult rush hour jams,
the same movement is immediately transformed into a position The Joy of
Sex forgot to mention, said to hit all pressure points and guaranteed
to drive any partner wild.

Roadkill Buffet was surprisingly politically correct for a comedy
show. With both homosexual and heterosexual couplings, an audience member's
tossed-in sock became a condom for a lesson on safe sex. However, under the
instantaneous pressures of improvisation, there is always the danger that
the humorous will cross the line over into the overly sensitive. A skit on
the Mike Tyson rape trial turned sour, prompting hushed disapproval and a
rapid scene change when the actor impersonating the rape victim began to
comment on the size of Tyson's masculinity.

During a skit called poets' corner, Jack Kotovsky G managed to rhyme
capacitor with ambassador. It is the technical jokes that receive the
greatest feedback from this crowd. Jokes about cold fusion and exothermic
beakers drew roars from the audience, while the troupe's request for a
literary style to work with received only silence.

Roadkill Buffet is probably not the kind of comedy show you'd pay
$15 and a two drink minimum to see. But it does have the feel of that sort
of comedy, but in training. With free admission, however, I'd certainly
recommend that all overworked students or underworked, exuberant seniors
make it a point to catch their next show at the Muddy Charles on Feb.
26.